PAMPHLET  COU^CnOM^ 
j  UNIVERSITY  UBRARy 

'  IRELAND'S  MISERi:5S 

THEIR  CAUSE. 

FROM  THE  PLOUGH,  THE  LOO:\r,  AND  THE  ANVIL,  PGR  SEPTEMBER,  1852 

New-York  :   Published  at  The  Tribune  Office,  154  Nassau  Street.   Price,  $1.25  per  hundred, 
20  cents  per  dozen,  2  cents  singly. 

"  I  REMEMBER,  when  I  saw  the  poor  Lettes  in  Livonia,  I  used  to  pity  them  for  hav- 
ing to  live  in  huts  built  of  the  unhewn  logs  of  trees,  the  crevices  being  stopped  up 
"with  moss.  I  pitied  them  on  account  of  their  low  doors,  and  their  diminutive  win- 
dows ;  and  gladly  would  I  have  arranged  their  chimneys  for  them  in  a  more  suitable 
manner.  Well,  Heaven  pardon  my  ignorance.  I  knew  not  that  I  should  ever  see  a 
people  on  whom  Almighty  God  had  imposed  yet  heavier  privations.  Now  that  I  have 
seen  Ireland,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Lettes,  the  Esthonians,  and  the  Finlanders,  lead 
a  life  of  comparative  comfort,  and  poor  Paddy  would  feel  like  a  king  with  their 
houses,  their  habiliments,  and  their  daily  fare. 

"A  wooden  house,  with  moss  to  stop  up  its  crevices,  would  be  a  palace  in  the  wild 
regions  of  Ireland.  Paddy's  cabin  is  built  of  earth,  one  shovelful  over  the  other, 
•with  a  few  stones  mingled  here  and  there,  till  the  wall  is  high  enough.  But  perhaps 
you  will  say,  the  roof  is  thatched  or  covered  with  bark.  Ay,  indeed !  A  few  sods  of 
grass,  cut  from  a  neighboring  bog,  are  his  only  thatch.  Well,  but  a  window  or  two 
at  least,  if  it  be  only  a  pane  of  glass  fixed  in  the  wall,  or  the  bladder  of  some  animal, 
or  a  piece  of  talc,  as  may  often  be  seen  in  a  Wallachian  hut  ?  What  idle  luxury 
were  this !  There  are  thousands  of  cabins  in  which  not  a  trace  of  a  window  is  to  be 
seen ;  nothing  but  a  little  square  hole  in  front,  which  doubles  the  duty  of  door,  win- 
dow, and  chimney ;  light,  smoke,  pigs,  and  children,  all  must  pass  in  and  out  of  the 
same  aperture ! 

"A  French  author,  Beaumont,  who  had  seen  the  Irish  peasant  in  his  cabin,  and 
the  North  American  Indian  in  his  wigwam,  has  assured  us  that  the  savage  is  better 
provided  for  than  the  poor  man  in  Ireland.  Indeed,  the  question  may  be  raised, 
whether  in  the  whole  world  a  nation  is  to  be  found  that  is  subjected  to  such  physical 
privations  as  the  peasantry  in  some  parts  of  Ireland.  This  fact  cannot  be  placed  in, 
too  strong  a  light;  for  if  it  can  once  be  shown  that  the  wretchedness  of  the  Irish 
population  is  without  a  parallel  example  on  the  globe,  surely  every  friend  of  hu- 
manity will  feel  himself  called  on  to  reflect  whether  means  may  not  be  found  for 
remedying  an  evil  of  so  astounding  a  magnitude ! 

A  Russian  peasant,  no  doubt,  is  the  slave  of  a  harder  master,  but  &till  he  is  fed 
and  housed  to  his  content,  and  no  trace  of  mendicancy  is  to  be  seen  in  him.  The 
Hungarians  are  certainly  not  among  the  best  used  people  in  the  world;  still,  what 
fine  wheaten  bread,  and  what  wine,  has  even  the  humblest  among  them  for  his  daily 
fare !  The  Hungarian  would  scarcely  believe  it,  if  he  were  to  be  told  there  was  a 
country  in  which  the  inhabitants  must  content  themselves  with  potatoes  every  alter- 
nate day  in  the  year. 

"Servia  and  Bosnia  are  reckoned  aiKong  the  most  wretched  countries  of  Europe, 
and  certainly  the  appearance  of  one  of  their  villages  has  little  that  is  attractive 
about  it ;  but  at  least  the  people,  if  badly  housed,  are  weU  clad.  We  look  not  for 
much  luxury  or  comfort  among  the  Tartars  of  the  Crimea  ;  we  call  them  poor  and 
barbarous,  but,  good  heavens they  look  at  least  like  human  creatures.  They  have 
a  national  costume,  their  houses  are  habitable,  their  orchards  are  carefully  tended, 
and  their  gaily-harnessed  ponies  are  mostly  in  good  condition.  An  Irishman  has 
nothing  national  about  hini  but  his  rags, — his  habitation  is  without  a  plan,  his  do- 
mestic economy  without  rule  or  law.  We  have  beggars  and  paupers  among  us,  but 
they  form  at  least  an  exception:  whereas,  in  Ireland,  beggary  or  abject  poverty  is 
the  prevailing  rule.  Tlie  nation  is  one  of  beggars,  and  they  who  are  above  beggary 
seem  to  form  the  exception. 

"  The  African  negroes  go  naked,  but  then  they  have  a  tropical  sun  to  warm  them. 
The  Irish  are  little  removed  from  a  state  of  nakedness;  and  their  climate,  though 
not  cold,  is  cool,  and  extremely  humid. 

*'  The  Indians  in  America  live  wretchedly  enough  at  times,  but  they  have  no  know- 


2  Ireland's  miseries:  their  cause. 

u;^^  

^-  •  ledgg.  of  a  better  condition,  and,  as  they  are  hunters,  they  have  every  now  and  then, 
■JHfWfcijiiKWictive  chase,  and  are  able  to  make  a  number  of  feast-days  in  the  year.  Many 
mZmMjxisJt^en  have  but  one  day  on  which  they  eat  flesh,  namely,  on  Christmas-day. 

'fl^\Qty  other  day  they  feed  on  potatoes,  and  nothing  but  potatoes.    Now  this  is  inhu- 
B  '^^fttin;  for  the  appetite  and  stomach  of  man  claim  variety  in  food,  and  nowhere  else 
£d  ire  find  human  beings  gnawing  from  year's  end  to  year's  end,  at  the  same  root, 
Diir^y,  or  weed.    There  are  animals  that  do  so,  but  human  beings  nowhere  except  in 
^  S  Ireldnd. 

"There  are  nations  of  slaves,  but  they  have,  by  long  custom,  been  made  uncon- 
scious of  the  yoke  of  slavery.  This  is  not  the  case  with  the  Irish,  who  have  a  strong 
feeling  of  liberty  within  them,  and  are  fully  sensible  of  the  weight  of  the  yoke  they 
have  to  bear.  They  are  intelligent  enough  to  know  the  injustice  done  them  by  the 
distorted  laws  of  their  country ;  and  while  they  are  themselves  enduring  the  extreme 
of  poverty,  they  have  frequently  before  them,  in  the  manner  of  life  of  their  English 
landlords,  a  spectacle  of  the  most  refined  luxury  that  human  ingenuity  ever  in- 
vented. 

<'  What  awakens  the  most  painful  feelings  in  travelling  through  one  of  these  rocky, 
boggy  districts,  rich  in  nothing  but  ruins,  is  this: — Whether  you  look  back  into  the 
past,  or  forward  to  the  future,  no  prospect  more  cheering  presents  itself.  There  is 
not  the  least  trace  left  to  show  that  the  country  has  ever  been  better  cultivated,  or 
that  a  happier  race  ever  dwelt  in  it.  It  seems  as  if  wretchedness  had  prevailed 
there  from  time  immemorial — as  if  rags  had  succeeded  rags,  bog  had  formed  over 
bog,  ruins  had  given  birth  to  ruins,  and  beggars  had  begotten  beggars,  for  a  long 
series  of  centuries.  Nor  does  the  future  present  a  more  cheering  view.  Even  for 
the  poor  Greeks  vmder  Turkish  domination,  there  was  more  hope  than  for  the  Irish 
under  the  English." — KoJiVs  Travels  in  Ireland. 

The  picture  here  given  is  from  the  pen  of  an  accomplished  German  travel- 
ler, who  had  visited  and  described  most  of  the  countries  of  Europe ;  but  who 
had  nowhere  found  the  squalor  and  wretchedness  that  prevailed  among  the 
people  of  that  important  portion  of  the  British  Empire,  called  Ireland. 
And  yet  he  travelled  eight  or  ten  years  since,  before  the  ravages  of  famine 
and  pestilence  had  been  so  fully  experienced  as  not  only  to  have  arrested 
the  progress  of  population,  but  actually  to  have  diminished  it  to  a  point 
lower  than  that  at  which  it  stood  thirty  years  since.  The  numbers  of  the 
last  four  censuses  liave  been  as  follows : — 

1821  6,801,827 

1831  7,767,401 

1841  8,175,124 

1851  6,515,794 

To  what  causes  may  this  extraordinary  course  of  events  be  attributed  ? 
Certainly  not  to  any  deficiency  of  land,  for  nearly  one-third  of  the  whole 
surface,  including  millions  of  acres  ol  the  richest  soils  of  the  kingdom,  re- 
mains in  a  state  of  nature.  Not  to  original  inferiority  of  the  soil  in  cul- 
tivation, for  it  has  been  confessedly  among  the  richest  in  the  empire.  Not 
to  a  deficiency  of  mineral  ores  or  fuel,  for  coal  abounds,  and  iron  ores  of  the 
richest  kind,  as  well  as  those  of  other  metals,  exist  in  vast  profusion.  Not 
to  any  deficiency  in  the  physical  qualities  of  the  Irishman,  for  it  is  an  estab- 
lished fact  that  he  is  capable  of  performing  far  more  labour  than  the  English- 
man, the  Frenchman,  or  the  Belgian.  Not  to  a  deficiency  of  intellectual  ability, 
for  Ireland  has  given  to  England  her  most  distinguished  soldiers  and  states- 
men ;  and  we  have  in  this  country  everywhere  evidence  that  the  Irishman  is 
capable  of  the  highest  degree  of  intellectual  improvement.  Nevertheless, 
while  possessed  of  every  advantage  that  nature  could  give  him,  we  find  the 
Irishman  at  home  a  slave  to  the  severest  taskmasters,  and  reduced  to  a  con- 
dition of  poverty  and  distress  such  as  is  exhibited  in  no  other  portion  of  the 
civilized  world.    No  choice  is  now  left  him  but  between  expatriation  and 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


3 


starvation,  and  therefore  it  is  that  we  see  him  now  everywhere  abandoning 
the  home  of  his  fathers,  to  seek  elsewhere  that  subsistence  which  Ireland, 
rich  as  she  is  in  soil  and  in  her  minerals,  in  her  navigable  rivers,  and  in 
her  facilities  of  communication  with  the  world,  can  no  longer  afford  him. 

To  enable  us  to  understand  the  causes  of  this  extraordinary  state  of  things, 
we  must  study  the  colonial  system  of  England ;  that  system  which  has  for  its 
object  the  conversion  of  all  the  people  of  the  rest  of  the  world  into  farmers  and 
planters,  dependant  upon  Manchester  and  Birmingham,  Leeds  and  Sheffield, 
for  a  market  for  their  products,  and  for  a  market  in  which  to  purchase  the 
machinery  of  cultivation,  and  the  clothing  of  the  cultivator,  his  wife  and  his 
children. 

The  government  which  followed  the  completion  of  the  Kevolution  of  1688, 
pledged  itself  to  discountenance  the  woollen  manufacture  of  Ireland,  with  a 
view  to  compel  the  export  of  raw  wool  to  England,  whence  its  exportation 
to  foreign  countries  was  prohibited ;  the  effect  of  which  was,  of  course,  to 
enable  the  English  manufacturer  to  purchase  it  at  his  own  price.  From 
that  period  forward  we  find  numerous  regulations  as  to  the  ports  from  which 
alone  woollen  yarn  or  cloth  might  go  to  England,  and  the  ports  of  the  latter 
through  which  it  might  come ;  while  no  effort  was  spared  to  induce  the  peo- 
ple of  Ireland  to  abandon  woollens  and  take  to  flax.  Laws  were  passed  prohi- 
biting the  export  of  Irish  cloth  and  glass  to  the  colonies.  By  other  laws  Irish 
ships  were  deprived  of  the  benefit  of  the  navigation  laws.  The  fisheries  were 
closed  against  them.  No  sugar  could  be  imported  from  any  place  but  Great 
Britain,  and  no  drawback  was  allowed  on  its  exportation  to  Ireland ;  and  thus 
was  the  latter  compelled  to  pay  a  tax  for  the  support  of  the  British  govern- 
ment, while  maintaining  its  own.  All  other  colonial  produce  was  required 
to  be  carried  first  to  England,  after  which  it  might  be  shipped  to  Ireland ; 
and  as  Irish  shipping  was  excluded  from  the  advantages  of  the  navigation 
laws,  it  followed  that  the  voyage  of  importation  was  to  be  made  in  British 
ships,  manned  by  British  seamen,  and  owned  by  British  merchants,  who  were 
thus  authorized  to  tax  the  people  of  Ireland  for  doing  their  work,  while  a 
large  portion  of  the  Irish  people  were  themselves  unemployed. 

While  thus  prohibiting  the  growth  of  manufactures  or  of  trade,  every 
inducement  was  held  out  to  them  to  confine  themselves  to  the  production  of 
commodities  required  by  the  English  manufacturers,  and  wool,  hemp,  and 
flax  were  admitted  into  England  free  of  duty ;  and  thus  we  see  that  the  system 
of  that  day  in  reference  to  Ireland  was  almost  precisely  what  it  is  now  in 
reference  to  the  world  at  large. 

During  our  War  of  the  Revolution,  freedom  of  trade  was  claimed  for 
Ireland ;  and  as  the  demand  was  made  at  a  time  when  a  large  portion  of  her 
people  were  under  arms  as  volunteers,  the  merchants  and  manufacturers  of 
England,  who  had  so  long  forced  themselves  into  the  situation  of  middlemen 
for  the  people  of  the  sister  kingdom,  found  themselves  compelled  to  remove 
some  of  the  restrictions  under  which  the  latter  had  so  long  remained.  Step 
by  step  changes  were  made,  until  at  length,  in  1783,  Ireland  was  declared 
independent.  Thenceforward  we  find  manufactures  and  trade  making 
progress;  and  such  continued  to  be  the  case,  until,  by  the  Act  of  Union, 
the  country  was  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  mere  colony,  without  the 
enjoyment  of  any  single  right  for  which  these  colonies  had  contended.  The 
Copyright  Laws  of  England  were  extended  to  Ireland,  and  at  once  the  large 
and  growing  manufacture  of  books  was  prostrated.*    The  Patent  Laws  were 


*  Perhaps  the  most  striking  illustration  of  the  changed  circumstances  of  Ireland 


4 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


extended  to  Ireland ;  and  as  England  bad  so  long  monopolized  to  herself  the 
manufacturing  machinery  then  in  use,  it  was  clear  that  it  was  there  the 
improvements  would  be  made,  and  that  thenceforth  the  manufactures  of 
Ireland  must  retrograde.  Manchester  had  the  home  market,  the  foreign 
market,  and,  to  no  small  extent,  that  of  Ireland  open  to  her;  while  the  manu- 
facturers of  the  latter  were  forced  to  contend  for  existence,  and  under  the 
most  disadvantageous  circumstances,  on  their  own  soil,  as  is  now  the,  case 
with  the  manufacturers  of  cloth  and  iron  in  this  country.  The  one  could 
afford  to  purchase  expensive  machinery,  and  to  adopt  whatever  improvements 
might  be  made,  while  the  other  could  not.  The  natural  consequence  was, 
that  Irish  manufactures  gradually  disappeared  as  the  Act  of  Union  came 
into  effect.  By  virtue  of  its  provisions,  the  duties  established  by  the  Irish 
Parliament  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  the  farmers  of  Ireland  in-  their 
efforts  to  bring  the  loom  and  the  amdl  into  close  proximity  with  the  plough  and 
the  harrow,  were  gradually  to  diminish,  and  British  free-trade  was  to  be  fully 
established ;  or,  in  other  words,  Manchester  and  Birmingham  were  to  have  a 
monopoly  of  supplying  Ireland  with  cloth  and  iron.  The  duty  on  English 
woollens  was  to  continue  twenty  years.  The  almost  prohibitory  duties  on 
English  calicoes  and  muslins  were  to  continue  until  1808 ;  after  which  they 
were  to  be  gradually  diminished,  until  in  1821  they  were  to  cease.  Those  on 
cotton  yarn  were  to  cease  in  1810.  The  effect  of  this  in  diminishing  the 
demand  for  Irish  labour,  is  seen  in  the  following  comparative  view  of  manu- 
factures at  the  date  of  the  Union,  and  at  different  periods  in  the  ensuing 
forty  years,  here  given  : 

Dublin,  1800,        Master  vroollen  manufacturers,.. 

"  Hands  employed,  

"  Master  ■wool-combers,  


Kilkenny,  1800,     Blanket  manufacturers. 


Dublin,  1800, 
Balbriggan,  1799, 
Wicklow,  1800, 
Cork,  1800, 


Silk-loom  weavers  at  work,  

Calico  looms  at  work,  

Hand-looms  at  work,  

Braid  weavers,  

*'  Worsted  weavers,  

Hosiers,  

**  Wool-combers,   ,  

"  Cotton  weavers,  

"  Linen  check  weavers,  

*'                Cotton    spinners,  bleachers, 
calico  printers,  

For  nearly  half  a  century  Ireland  has  had  perfectly  free  trade  with  the 
richest  country  in  the  world ;  and  what'^  says  the  author  of  a  recent  work 
of  great  ability,  "  has  that  free  trade  done  for  her  ?  She  has  even  now,^'  he 
continues,  "  no  employment  for  her  teeming  population  except  upon  the 
land.    She  ought  to  have  had,  and  might  easily  have  had,  other  and  various 


..  91 

1840, 

12 

..  4918 

602 

..  30 

1834, 

5 

230 

66 

13 

1841, 

1 

720 

none. 

..  56 

1822, 

42 

,  3000 

925 

2500 

1840, 

250 

,  2000 

1841, 

226 

..  1000 

1841, 

none. 

,,  1000 

1834, 
(< 

40 

.,  2000 

90 

..  300 

(( 

28 

..  700 

<( 

110 

,  2000 

a 

200 

,.  600 

K 

none. 

thousands  ... 

n 

none. 

since  the  Union,  is  to  be  found  in  the  diminished  consumption  of  books.  Prior  to 
1800,  a  large  portion  of  the  valuable  books  published  in  England,  were  reprinted 
across  the  channel ;  and  evidence  of  this  may  especially  be  found  on  an  examination 
of  any  of  our  old  law  libraries,  where  almost  all  the  reporters  of  that  period,  as  well 
as  many  of  the  most  valuable  treatises,  will  be  found  to  be  of  Irish  editions.  It  may 
be  doubted  if  the  whole  quantity  of  books  sold  in  Ireland  at  this  time  is  equal  to 
that  which  before  the  Union  was  published  by  a  single  house. 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause.  5 


employments,  and  plenty  of  it.  Are  we  to  believe/'  says  he,  "  the  calumny 
that  the  Irish  are  lazy  and  won't  work  ?  Is  Irish  human  nature  different 
from  other  human  nature  ?  Are  not  the  most  laborious  of  all  labourers  in 
London  and  New  York,  Irishmen  ?  Are  Irishmen  inferior  in  understanding  ? 
We  Englishmen  who  have  personally  known  Irishmen  in  the  army,  at  the 
bar,  and  in  the  church,  know  that  there  is  no  better  head  than  a  disciplined 
Irish  one.  But  in  all  these  cases,  that  master  of  industry,  the  stomach,  has 
been  well  satisfied.  Let  an  Englishman  exchange  his  bread  and  beer,  and 
beef  and  mutton,  for  no  breakfast,  for  a  lukewarm  lumper  at  dinner,  and  no 
supper.  "With  such  a  diet,  how  much  better  is  he  than  an  Irishman — a 
Celt,  as  he  calls  him  ?  No,  the  truth  is,  that  the  misery  of  Ireland  is  not 
from  the  human  nature  that  grows  there — it  is  from  England's  perverse 
legislation,  past  and  present.''* 

Deprived  of  all  employment,  except  in  the  labour  of  agriculture,  land 
became,  of  course,  the  great  object  of  pursuit.  "  Land  is  life,"  said,  most 
emphatically.  Chief  J ustice  Blackburn ;  and  the  people  had  before  them  the 
choice  between  the  occupation  of  land,  at  ani/  rent,  or  starvation.  The  lord 
of  the  land  was  thus  enabled  to  dictate  his  own  terms,  and  therefore  it 
has  been  that  we  have  heard  of  the  payment  of  five,  six,  eight,  and  even  as 
much  as  ten  pounds  per  acre.  "Enormous  rents,  low  wages,  farms  of  an 
enormous  extent,  let  by  rapacious  and  indolent  proprietors  to  monopolizing 
land-jobbers,  to  be  relet  by  intermediate  oppressors,  for  five  times  their  value, 
among  the  wretched  starvers  on  potatoes  and  water,"  led  to  a  constant  suc- 
cession of  outrages,  followed  by  Insurrection  Acts,  Arms  Acts,  and  Coercion 
Acts,  when  the  real  remedy  was  to  be  found  in  the  adoption  of  a  system  that 
would  emancipate  the  country  from  the  tyranny  of  the  spindle  and  the  loom, 
and  permit  the  labour  of  Ireland  to  find  employment  at  home. 

That  employment  could  not  be  had.  With  the  suppression  of  Irish  manu- 
factures the  demand  for  labour  had  disappeared.  We  have  now  before  us 
the  work  of  a  highly  intelligent  traveller,  describing  the  state  of  Ireland  in 
1834,  thirteen  years  after  the  free-trade  provisions  of  the  Act  of  Union  had 
come  fully  into  operation,  from  which  we  shall  now  give  some  extracts, 
showing  that  they  were  compelled  to  remain  idle,  although  willing  to  work 
at  the  lowest  wages — such  wages  as  could  not  by  any  possibility  enable  them 
to  do  more  than  merely  sustain  life,  and  perhaps  not  even  that. 

Casliel. — "Wages  here  only  ciglitpmcc  a  day,  and  numbers  altogether  "without 
employment." 

Cahir. — ''I  noticed,  on  Sunday,  on  coming  from  church,  the  streets  crowded  -with 
labourers,  ■with  spades  and  other  implements  in  their  hands,  standing  to  be  hired ; 
and  I  ascertained  that  any  number  of  these  men  might  have  been  engaged,  ou 
constant  employment,  at  sixpence  per  day  "without  diet." 

Wicklow. — "The  husband  of  this  -woman  -was  a  labourer,  at  sixpence  a  day,  eighty 
«  of  which  sixpences — that  is,  eighty  days'  labour — were  absorbed  in  the  rent  of  the 

cabin."  "In  another  cabin  was  a  decently  dressed  woman  with  five  children,  and 
her  husband  was  also  a  labourer  at  sixpence  a  day.  The  pig  had  been  taken  for  rent 
a  few  days  before."    "  I  found  some  labourers  receiving  only  fourpence per  day.'^ 

Kilkenny. — "  Upwards  of  2000  persons  totally  without  employment."  "  I  visited 
the  factories  that  used  to  support  200  men  with  their  families,  and  how  many  men 
did  I  find  at  work?  Oxe  man  !  In  place  of  finding  men  occupied,  I  saw  them  in 
scores,  like  spectres,  walking  about,  and  lying  about  the  mill.  I  saw  immense  piles 
of  goods  completed,  but  for  which  there  was  no  sale.  I  saw  heaps  of  blankets,  and 
I  saw  every  loom  idle.  As  for  the  carpets  which  had  excited  the  jealousy  and  the 
fears  of  Kidderminster,  not  one  had  been  made  for  seven  months.  To  convey  an  idea 
of  the  destitution  of  these  people,  I  mention,  that  when  an  order  recently  arrived  for 


*  Sophisms  of  Free  Trade,  by  J.  Barnard  Byles,  Esq. 


6 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


the  manufacture  of  as  many  blankets  for  the  police  as  would  have  kept  the  men  at 
work  for  a  few  days,  bonfires  were  lighted  about  the  country — not  bonfires  to  com- 
municate insurrection,  but  to  evince  joy  that  a  few  starving  men  were  about  to  earn 
bread  to  support  their  families.  Nevertheless,  we  are  told  that  Irishmen  will  not 
work  at  home." 

Callen. — "  In  this  town,  containing  between  four  and  five  thousand  inhabitants,  at 
least  1000  are  without  regular  employment,  six  or  seven  hundred  entirely  destitute, 
and  there  are  upwards  of  200  mendicants  in  the  town — persons  incapable  of  work." — 
Inglis's  Ireland  in  1834. 

Such  was  the  picture  everywhere  presented  to  the  eye  of  this  intelligent 
traveller.  Go  where  he  might,  he  found  hundreds  anxious  for  employment, 
yet  no  employment  could  be  had,  unless  they  could  travel  to  England,  there 
to  spend  loeehs  in  travelling  round  the  country  in  quest  of  days  of  employ- 
ment, the  wages  for  which  might  enable  them  to  pay  their  rent  at  home. 
"  The  Celt,''  says  the  Timcsj  "  is  the  hewer  of  wood  and  the  drawer  of  water 
to  the  Saxon.  The  great  works  of  this  country,"  it  continues,  depend  on 
cJicap  lahourJ'  Such  being  the  case,  the  lower  the  price  at  which  the  Celt 
could  be  made  to  work,  the  better  for  the  Saxon ;  and  no  better  mode  could 
be  found  of  cheapening  labour  than  the  sacrifice  of  Irish  manufactures, 
brought  about  by  the  adoption  of  British  free  trade,  the  inevitable  effect  of 
which  must  be  that  of  placing  the  whole  population  at  home  in  the  power  of 
the  few  owners  of  land,  and  abroad  in  that  of  the  projectors  of  the  great 
works  of  England,  requiring  for  their  accomplishment  a  large  supply  of  those 
"  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water." 

It  might  be  thought,  however,  that  Ireland  was  deficient  in  the  capital 
required  for  obtaining  machinery  of  manufacture  to  enable  her  people  to 
maintain  competition  with  her  powerful  neighbour.  In  reply  to  this  we  have 
to  say  that  before  the  Union  she  had  that  machinery;  and  from  the  date  of  that 
arrangement,  so  fraudulently  brought  about,  by  which  was  settled  conclu- 
sively the  destruction  of  Irish  manufactures,  the  annual  waste  of  labour  was 
greater  than  the  whole  amount  of  capital  then  employed  in  the  cotton  and 
woollen  manufactures  of  England.  From  that  date  the  people  of  Ireland 
were  thrown,  from  year  to  year,  more  in  the  hands  of  middlemen,  who  ac- 
cumulated fortunes  that  they  would  not  invest  in  the  improvement  of  land, 
and  coidd  not,  under  the  system  which  prostrated  manufactures,  invest  in 
machinery  of  any  kind  calculated  to  render  labour  productive  ;  and  all  their 
accumulation&  icere  sent  therefore  to  England  for  investment.  We  have  now 
before  us  an  official  statement  shewing  that  the  transfers  of  British  securities 
from  England  to  Ireland,  that  is  to  say,  the  investment  of  Irish  capital  in  Eng- 
land, in  the  thirteen  years  following  the  final  adoption  of  British  free  trade 
in  1821,  amounted  to  as  many  millions  of  pounds  sterling ;  and  thus  was  Ire- 
land forced  to  contribute  cheap  labour  and  cheap  capital  to  building  up  'Hhe 
great  works  of  Britain.^'  Further,  it  was  provided  by  law  that  whenever  the 
poor  people  of  a  neighbourhood  contributed  to  a  saving  fund  the  amount 
should  not  be  applied  in  any  manner  calculated  to  furnish  local  employment, 
but  should  be  transferred  for  investment  in  the  British  funds.  The  land- 
lords fled  to  England,  and  their  rent  followed  them.  The  middlemen  sent 
their  capital  to  England.  The  trader  or  the  labourer  that  could  accumulate  a 
little  capital  saw  it  sent  to  England ;  and  he  was  then  compelled  to  follow 
it.  Such  is  the  history  of  the  origin  of  the  present  abandonment  of  Ireland 
by  its  inhabitants. 

The  form  in  which  rents,  profits,  and  savings,  as  well  as  taxes,  went  to 
England,  was  that  of  raw  products  of  the  soil,  to  be  consumed  abroad; 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


7 


yielding  nothing  to  he  returned  to  the  land,  which  was,  of  course,  impo- 
Terished. 

The  exports  of  animal  produce  in  the  year  1835,  had  attained  to  the  fol- 
lowing figures  : 


Cows  and  oxen,   9(S,150 

Horses,   4,655 

Sheep,  125,452 

Swine,  376,191 

Bacon  and  hams,  lbs.,  379,111 

Beef  and  pork,  lbs.,  370,172 

Butter,  lbs.,  827,009 

Lard,  lbs.,   70,267 


In  these  cases  some  return  was  made  to  the  land  in  the  inanure  yielded 
by  the  cows  and  oxen,  the  hogs  and  the  sheep )  but  from  the  grain  exported, 
averaging  for  several  years  preceding  this  date,  about  twenty-five  millions 
bushels,  of  60  pounds  each,  no  return  whatever  was  made.  The  poor 
people  were,  in  fact,  selling  their  soil  to  pay  for  cotton  and  woollen  goods 
that  they  should  have  manufactured  themselves,  for  coal  which  abounded 
among  themselves,  for  iron,  all  the  materials  of  which  existed  at  home  in 
great  profusion,  and  for  a  small  quantity  of  tea,  sugar,  and  other  foreign 
commodities,  while  the  amount  required  to  pay  rent  to  absentees,  and  inte- 
rest to  mortgagees,  was  estimated  at  more  than  seven  millions  of  pounds  ster- 
ling, or  almost  thirty-five  millions  of  dollars.  Here  was  a  drain  that  no  nation 
could  bear,  however  great  its  productive  power ;  and  the  whole  of  it  was  due 
to  the  colonial  system,  British  free  trade  forbade  the  application  of  labour^ 
talent,  or  capital,  to  any  thing  but  agriculture,  and  thus  forbade  advance  in 
civilization.  The  inducements  to  remain  at  home  steadily  diminished. 
Those  who  could  live  without  labour  found  that  society  had  changed ;  and 
they  fled  to  England,  France,  or  Italy.  Those  who  desired  to  work,  and 
felt  that  they  were  qualified  for  something  beyond  mere  manual  labour,  fled  to 
England  or  America ;  and  thus  by  degrees  was  the  unfortunate  country  de- 
pleted of  every  thing  that  could  render  it  a  home  in  which  to  remain,  while 
those  who  could  not  fly  remained  to  be,  as  the  Times  so  well  describes  it, 
mere  "  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  to  the  Saxon,"  happy  when 
a  full  grown  man  could  find  employment  at  sixpence  a  day,  and  that,  too, 
without  food. 

Throughout  the  south  and  west  of  Ireland,'^  said  an  English  traveller  in 
1842,  four  years  before  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  had  produced  disease 
among  the  potatoes — 

**  The  traveller  is  haiinted  by  the  face  of  the  popular  starvation.  It  is  not  the 
exception — it  is  the  condition  of  the  people.  In  this  fairest  and  richest  of  countries, 
men  are  suffering  and  starving  by  millions.  There  are  thousands  of  them,  at  this 
minute,  stretched  in  the  sunshine  at  their  cabin  doors  with  7io  work,  scarcely  any 
food,  no  hope  seemingly.  Strong  countrymen  are  lying  in  bed,  'for  the  hunger^ — be- 
cause a  man  lying  on  his  back  does  not  need  so  much  food  as  a  person  a-foot.  Many 
of  them  have  torn  up  the  unripe  potatoes  from  their  little  gardens,  and  to  exist  now 
must  look  to  winter,  when  they  shall  have  to  suffer  starvation  and  cold  too,^' 

"Everywhere,"  said  the  Quarterly  Review,  "throughout  all  parts,  even  in  the  best 
towns,  and  in  Dublin  itself,  you  will  meet  men  and  boys — not  dressed,  not  covered — 
but  hung  round  with  a  collection  of  rags  of  unrivalled  variety,  squalidity,  and  filth — 
walking  dunghills.  *  ^  *  No  one  ever  saw  an  English  scarecrow  with  such 
rags," 

The  existence  of  such  a  state  of  things  was,  said  the  advocate  of  British 
free  trade,  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  the  population  was  too  nume- 


8 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


rous  for  the  land,  and  yet  a  third  of  the  surface,  including  the  richest  lands 
in  the  kingdom,  was  lying  unoccupied  and  waste. 

Of  single  counties,"  said  an  English  Tsriter,  "  Mayo,  -with  a  population  of  389,000, 
and  a  rental  of  only  30O,O00Z.,  has  an  area  of  1,364,000  acres,  of  which  800,000  are 
waste!  No  less  than  470,000  acres,  being  very  nearly  equal  to  the  whole  extent  of 
surface  now  under  cultivation,  are  declared  to  be  reclaimable.  Galway,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  423,000,  and  a  valued  rental  of  433,000/.,  has  upward  of  700,000  acres  of 
waste,  410,000  of  which  are  reclaimable  !  Kerry,  with  a  population  of  293,000,  has 
an  area  of  1,180,000  acres— 727,000  being  waste,  and  400,000  of  them  reclaimable! 
Even  the  union  of  Glenties,  Lord  Monteagle's  ne  plus  ultra  of  redundant  population, 
has  an  area  of  245,000  acres,  of  which  200,000  are  waste,  and  for  the  most  part 
reclaimable,  to  its  population  of  43,000.  While  the  barony  of  Ennis,  that  abomina- 
tion of  desolation,  has  230,000  acres  of  land  to  its  5,000  paupers — a  proportion 
which,  as  Mr.  Carter,  one  of  the  principal  proprietors,  remarks  in  his  circular 
advertisement  for  tenants,  *  is  at  the  rate  of  only  one  family  to  230  acres ;  so  that 
if  but  one  head  of  a  family  were  employed  to  every  230  acres,  there  need  not  be  a 
single  pauper  in  the  entire  district;  a  proof,^  he  adds,  'that  nothing  but  employ- 
ment IS  WANTING  TO  SET  THIS  COUNTRY  TO  EIGHTS!'  lu  which  opinion  wc  fuUy 
coincide." 

That  such  was  the  true  cause  of  Ireland's  difi&cutles  none  could  doubt. 
British  free  trade  had  drained  the  country  of  capital,  and  the  labour  even  of 
men  found  no  demand,  while  women  and  children  starved,  that  the  women 
and  children  of  England  might  spin  cotton  and  weave  cloth  that  Ireland  was  too 
poor  to  purchase.  Bad,  however,  as  was  all  this,  a  worse  state  of  things  was 
at  hand.  Poverty  and  wretchedness  compelled  the  wretched  people  to  fly  in 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  across  the  Channel,  thus  following  the  capi- 
tal and  the  soil  that  had  been  transferred  to  Birmingham  and  Manchester ; 
and  the  streets  and  cellars  of  those  towns,  and  of  those  of  London,  Liver- 
pool, and  Glasgow,  were  filled  with  men,  women,  and  children  in  a  state 
almost  of  starvation ;  while  throughout  the  country,  men  were  offering  to  per- 
form the  farm  labor  for  food  alone,  and  a  cry  had  arisen  among  the  people 
of  England  that  the  labourers  were  likely  to  be  swamped  by  these  starving 
Irishmen  :  to  provide  against  which  it  was  needed  that  the  landlords  of  Ire- 
land should  be  compelled  to  support  their  own  poor,  and  forthwith  an  Act  of 
Parliament  was  passed  for  that  purpose.  As  a  necessary  consequence  of  this 
there  was  an  increased  desire  to  rid  the  country  of  the  men,  women,  and 
children  whose  labour  could  not  be  sold,  and  who  could  therefore  pay  no  rent. 
The  "  Crow-bar  Brigade"  was  therefore  called  into  more  active  service,  as  will 
be  seen  by  the  following  account  of  their  labours  in  a  single  one  of  the 
"  Unions"  established  under  the  new  poor-law  system,  which  in  many  cases 
took  the  wb"ie  rent  of  the  land  for  the  maintenance  of  those  who  had  been 
reducea  lo  pauperism  by  the  determination  of  the  people  of  Manchester  and 
Birmingham  to  continue  the  colonial  system  under  which  Ireland  had  been 
ruined. 

**  In  Galway  Union,  recent  accounts  declared  the  number  of  poor  evicted,  and  their 
homes  levelled  within  the  last  two  years,  to  equal  the  numbers  in  Kilrush — 4,000 
families  and  20,000  human  beings  are  said  to  have  been  here  also  thrown  upon  the 
road,  houseless  and  homeless.  I  can  readily  believe  the  statement,  for  to  me  some 
parts  of  the  country  appeared  like  an  enormous  graveyard — the  numerous  gables  of 
the  unroofed  dwellings  seemed  to  be  gigantic  tombstones.  They  were,  indeed, 
records  of  decay  and  death  far  more  melancholy  than  the  grave  can  show.  Looking 
on  them,  the  doubt  rose  in  my  mind,  am  I  in  a  civilized  country?  Have  we  really 
a  free  constitution?    Can  such  scenes  be  paralleled  in  Siberia  or  Caffraria?" 

Up  to  this  time  there  had  been  repeated  cases  of  partial  famine,  but  now 
the  nation  was  startled  by  the  news  of  the  almost  total  failure  of  the  crop  of 


Ireland's  misekies  :  their  cause. 


9 


potatoes,  the  single  description  of  food  upon  which  the  people  of  Ireland  had 
been  reduced  to  depend.    Constant  cropping  of  the  soil,  returning  to  it  none 
of  the  manure  because  of  the  necessity  for  exporting  almost  the  whole  of  its 
products,  has  produced  disease  in  the  vegetable  world,  precisely  as  the  want 
of  proper  nourishment  produces  it  in  the  animal  world,  and  now  a  cry  of 
famine  rang  throughout  the  land.    The  poor-houses  were  everywhere  filled, 
while  the  roads,  and  the  streets,  and  the  graveyards  were  occupied  by  the 
starving  and  the  naked,  the  dying  and  the  dead ;  and  the  presses  of  England 
were  filled  with  denunciations  of  English  and  Irish  landholders,  who  desired 
to  make  food  dear,  while  men,  women,  and  children  were  perishing  by  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  for  want  of  food.    Until  now,  Ireland  had  been  protected 
in  the  market  of  England,  as  some  small  compensation  for  the  sacrifice  she 
had  made  of  her  manufacturing  interests ;  but  now,  small  as  has  been  the 
boon,  it  was  to  be  withdrawn.    The  famine  came  most  opportunely  for  Man- 
chester and  Birmingham.    They  had  exhausted  all  the  foreign  countries  with 
which  they  had  been  permitted  to  maintain  what  they  denominated  free 
trade — India,  Portugal,  Turkey,  the  West  Indies  and  Ireland  herself — and  it 
had  become  necessary  to  make  an  eff"ort  to  obtain  a  control  over  the  trade  of 
the  only  prosperous  countries  of  the  world,  those  which  had  established  pro- 
tection of  the  people  against  the  British  mpnopoly,  to  wit — this  country,  France, 
Belgium,  Germany,  and  Russia — and  the  mode  of  accomplishing  this  was  that 
of  offering  them  the  same  freedom  of  trade  vi  food  hy  ivJdch  Ireland  had  been 
ruined.    The  farmers  were  everywhere  invited  to  exhaust  their  soil  by  send- 
ing its  products  to  England  to  be  consumed ;  and  the  corn  laws  were  re- 
pealed for  the  purpose  of  enabling  them  to  impoverish  themselves  by  entering 
into  competition  with  the  starving  Irishman,  who  was  thus  at  once  deprived 
of  the  market  of  England,  us  by  the  Act  of  Union  he  had  been  deprived  of 
his  own.    The  cup  of  wretchedness  was  before  well  nigh  full,  but  it  was  now 
filled.    The  price  of  food  fell,  and  the  labourer  was  ruined,  for  the  whole 
product  of  his  land  would  scarcely  pay  his  rent.    The  landlord  was  ruined, 
for  he  could  collect  no  rents,  and  he  was  at  the  same  time  liable  for  the  pay- 
ment of  enormous  taxes  for  the  maintenance  of  his  poor  neighbours.    His  land 
was  encumbered  with  mortgages  and  settlements,  created  when  food  was 
high,  and  he  could  pay  no  interest ;  and  now  the  middlemen  of  England 
stepped  in  to  claim  their  "  pound  of  flesh,'^  and  a  law  was  passed,  by  aid  of 
which  property  could  be  summarily  disposed  of  at  public  sale,  and  the  pro- 
ceeds distributed  among  those  who  had  legal  claims  upon  it.    The  last  blow 
was  thus  given  to  Ireland,  and  from  that  day  to  this,  famine  and  pestilence, 
levellings  and  evictions,  have  been  the  order  of  the  day.    Their  efi'ect  has 
everywhere  been  to  drive  the  poor  people  from  the  land,  and  its  consequences 
are  seen  in  the  fact  that  the  population  numbered,  in  1850,  one  million  six 
hundred  and  fifty-nine  thousand  less  than  it  did  in  1840;  while  the  starving 
population  of  the  towns  had  largely  increased.    The  county  of  Cork  had 
diminished  222,000,  while  Dublin  had  grown  in  numbers  22,000.  Galway 
had  lost  125,000,  while  the  city  had  gained  7,422.    Connaught  had  lost 
414,000,  while  Limerick  and  Belfast  had  gained  30,000.  Announcing 
these  startling  facts,  the  London  Times,  the  great  organ  of  British  free- 
traders, stated  that    for  a  whole  generation  man  had  been  a  drug  in  Ireland, 
and  population  a  nuisance.'^    The    inexhaustible  Irish  supply  had,"  as  it 
continued,  "  kept  down  the  price  of  English  labour,"  but  this  cheapness  of 
labour  had  *^  contributed  vastly  to  the  improvement  and  power"  of  England, 
and  largely  to  "  the  enjoyment  of  those  who  had  money  to  spend."  Now, 
however,  a  change  appeared  to  be  at  hand,  and  it  was  to  be  feared  that  the 


10 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


prosperity  of  England,  based  as  it  had  been  on  cheap  Irish  labour,  might  be 
interfered  with,  as  famine  and  pestilence,  evictions  and  emigration,  were  thin- 
ning out  the  Celts  who  had  so  long,  as  it  said,  been  "  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water  for  the  Saxon."  The  Bail^  News,  another  of  the  advo- 
cate of  the  system  which  has  exhausted  and  ruined  Ireland,  and  is  now 
transferring  its  land  to  the  men  who  have  enriched  themselves  by  acting  as 
middlemen  between  the  producers  and  consumers  of  the  world,  rejoiced  in 
the  great  number  of  those  who  had  fled  from  their  native  soil  to  escape  the 
horrors  of  starvation  and  pestilence.  This  it  regarded  as  the  joyful  side  of 
the  case.    "We  give  its  words  : 

"What  -will  follow?  This  great  good,  among  others— that  the  stagnant  weight  of 
unemployed  population  in  these  insulated  realms  is  never  likely  again  to  accumulate 
to  the  dangerous  amount  which  there  was  sometimes  cause  to  apprehend  that,  from 
unforeseen  revulsions  in  industry  or  foreign  trade,  it  might  have  done.  A  natural 
vent  is  now  so  thoroughly  opened,  and  so  certain  to  grow  wider  and  clearer  every 
day,  that  the  overflow  will  pass  off  whenever  a  moderate  degree  of  pressure  recurs. 
Population,  skill,  and  capital,  also,  will  no  longer  wait  in  consternation  till  they  are 
half  spent  with  watching  and  fear.  The  way  is  ready.  They  will  silently  shift 
their  quarters  when  the  competition  or  depression  here  becomes  uncomfortable. 
Every  family  has  already  friends  or  acquaintances  who  have  gone  before  them  over  sea. 
Socially,  our  insulation  as  a  people  is  proved,  by  the  census  of  1851,  to  be  at  an  end." 

The  Times,  too,  rejoices  in  the  prospect  that  the  resources  of  Ireland  will 
now  probably  be  developed,  as  the  Saxon  takes  the  place  of  the  Celt,  who  has 
so  long  hewn  the  wood  and  drawn  the  water  for  his  Saxon  masters.  Pros- 
perity and  happiness  may,"  as  it  thinks,  some  day  reign  over  that  beautiful 
island.  Its  fertile  soil,  its  rivers  and  lakes,  its  water-power,  its  minerals,  and 
other  materials  for  the  wants  and  luxuries  of  man,  may  one  day  be  developed; 
but  all  ajypearances  are  against  the  belief  that  this  will  ever  hajypen  in  the 
dai/s  of  the  Celt.  That  tribe  will  soon  fulfil  the  great  law  of  Providence 
which  seems  to  enjoin  and  reward  the  union  of  races.  It  will  mix  with  the 
Anglo-American,  and  be  known  no  more  as  a  jealous  and  separate  jyeople. 
Its  present  place  will  be  occupied  by  the  more  mixed,  more  docile,  and  more 
serviceable  race,  which  has  long  borne  the  yoke  of  sturdy  industry  in  this 
island,  which  can  submit  to  a  master  and  obey  the  law.  This  is  no  longer  a 
dream,  for  it  is  a  fact  now  in  progress,  and  every  day  riiore  apparent." 

Commenting  upon  the  view  thus  presented,  one  of  our  American  contem- 
poraries most  truly  says,  "  There  is  a  cold-blooded  atrocity  in  the  spirit  of 
these  remarks  for  which  examples  will  be  sought  in  vain,  except  among  the 
doctors  of  the  free-trade  school.  Naturalists  have  learned  to  look  with  philo- 
sophical indiflference  upon  the  agonies  of  a  rabbit  or  a  mouse  expiring  in  an 
exhausted  receiver,  but  it  requires  long  teaching  from  the  economists  before 
men's  hearts  can  be  so  steeled,  that  after  pumping  out  all  the  sustenance  of 
vitality  from  one  of  the  fairest  islands  under  the  sun,  they  can  discourse 
calmly  upon  its  depopulation  as  proof  of  the  success  of  the  experiment,  can 
talk  with  bitter  irony  of  ^  that  strange  region  of  the  earth  where  such  a  peo- 
ple, affectionate  and  hopeful,  genial  and  witty,  industrious  and  independent, 
was  produced  and  could  not  stay,'  and  can  gloat  in  the  anticipation  that 
prosperity  and  happiness  may  some  day  reign  over  that  beautiful  island,  and 
its  boundless  resources  for  the  wants  and  luxuries  of  man  be  developed,  not 
for  the  Celt  but  ^  for  a  more  mixed,  more  docile,  and  more  serviceable  race, 
which  can  submit  to  a  master  and  obey  the  law.'  " 

The  Times  rejoices  that  the  place  of  the  Celt  is  in  future  to  be  occupied 
by  cattle,  as  sheep  already  occupy  the  place  of  the  Highlander  expelled  from 
the  land  in  which,  before  Britain  undertook  to  underwork  the  world  and 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


11 


thus  secure  a  monopoly  for  the  men  of  Manchester  and  Birmingham,  his 
fathers  were  as  secure  in  their  rights  as  was  the  landowner  himself.*  Irish 
journals  take  a  different  view  of  the  prospect.  They  deprecate  the  idea  of 
the  total  expulsion  of  the  native  race,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  following  extract 
from  The  Western  Star.  Speaking  of  the  exodus  of  the  people  from  the 
province  of  Connaught,  it  says  : 

There  is  no  doubt  that  in  a  few  years  more,  if  some  stop  is  not  put  to  the  present 
outpouring  of  the  people  to  America,  and  latterly  to  Australia,  there  will  not  be  a 
million  of  the  present  race  of  inhabitants  to  be  found  within  the  compass  of  the  four 
provinces.    From  the  west,"  it  is  added,     they  are  flying  in  hundreds." 

"No  thoughts  of  the  land  of  their  birth,"  it  continues,  "  seems  to  enter  their 
minds,  although  the  Irish  people  have  been  proverbial  for  their  attachment  to  their 
country.  The  prospect  of  an  abundant  harvest  has  not  the  slightest  effect  in  giving 
pause  to  their  outward  movement.  The  predominant,  and,  in  fact,  the  only  feeling 
that  seems  to  pervade  them,  is  an  indescribable  anxiety  to  get  out  of  the  country  at 
all  hazards.  If  war,  famine,  and  pestilence  were  known  to  be  close  at  hand,  there 
could  not  be  greater  avidity  shown  to  fly  from  their  houses  than  is  every  day  exhi- 
bited by  the  hundreds  who  crowd  our  high  roads  and  railways  in  their  journey  to 
the  shipping  ports." 

What  is  the  prospect  of  a  change  may  be  seen  by  the  following  extract 
from  one  of  the  Dublin  papers,  received  by  the  last  steamer,  in  which  are 
the  measures  now  in  course  of  being  carried  out,  with  the  view  to  prepare 
the  land  of  the  Celt  for  the  occupation  of  the  Saxon  and  his  cattle. 

*'  The  Galway  papers  are  full  of  the  most  deplorable  accounts  of  wholesale  evic- 
tions, or  rather  exterminations,  in  that  miserable  country.  The  tenantry  are  turned 
out  of  the  cottages  by  scores  at  a  time.  As  many  as  203  men,  women,  and  children 
have  been  driven  upon  the  roads  and  ditches  by  way  of  one  day's  work,  and  have  now 
no  resource  but  to  beg  their  bread  in  desolate  places,  or  to  bury  their  griefs,  in  many 
instances  for  ever,  within  the  walls  of  the  Union  workhouse.  Land  agents  direct  the 
operation.  The  work  is  done  by  a  large  force  of  police  and  soldiery.  Under  the 
protection  of  the  latter,  'the  Crowbar  Brigade'  advance  to  the  devoted  township, 
takes  possession  of  the  houses,  such  as  they  are,  and,  with  a  few  turns  of  the  crow- 
bar and  a  few  pulls  at  a  rope,  brings  down  the  roof,  and  leaves  nothing  but  a  tottering 


*  As  our  readers  may  desire  to  understand  the  process  of  eviction  in  Scotland,  we 
give  the  following  extracts  from  recent  English  journals  describing  it,  as  now  being 
carried  on,  and  as  likely  to  be  continued. 

A  Colonel  Gordon,  the  owner  of  estates  in  South  Uist  and  Barra,  in  the  highlands 
of  Scotland,  has  sent  off  over  1100  destitute  tenants  and  cotters  under  the  most  cruel 
and  delusive  temptations;  assuring  them  that  they  would  be  taken  care  of  imme- 
diately on  their  arrival  at  Quebec  by  the  emigrant  agent,  receive  a  free  passage  to 
Upper  Canada,  where  they  would  be  provided  with  work  by  the  government  agents, 
and  receive  grants  of  land  on  certain  imaginary  conditions.  Seventy-one  of  the  last 
cargo  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  have  signed  a  statement  that  some  of  them  fled  to 
the  mountains  when  an  attempt  was  made  to  force  them  to  emigrate.  'Whereupon,' 
they  add,  '  Mr.  Fleming  gave  orders  to  a  policeman,  who  was  accompanied  by  the 
ground  officer  of  the  estate  in  Barra,  and  some  constables,  to  pursue  the  people  who 
had  runaway  among  the  mountains,  which  they  did,  and  succeeded  in  capturing  about 
imenty  from  the  mountains  and  from  other  islands  in  the  neighbourhood ;  but  only  came 
with  the  officers  on  an  attempt  being  made  to  handcuff  them,  and  that  some  %oho  ran  away 
were  not  brought  back  ;  in  consequence  of  which  four  families,  at  least,  have  been  divided^ 
some  having  come  in  the  ships  to  Quebec,  while  other  members  of  the  same  families  are  left 
in  the  highlands.' " 

"On  board  the  Conrad  and  the  Birman  were  518  persons  from  Mull  and  Tyree, 
sent  out  by  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  who  provided  them  with  a  free  passage  to 
Montreal,  where  on  arrival  they  presented  the  same  appearance  of  destitution  as 
those  from  South  Uist,  sent  out  by  Col.  Gordon — that  is,  '  entirely  destitute  of  money 
and  provisions.'    They  were  all  sent  free  to  Hamilton." 

It  may  be  proper  to  add,  that  starvation  made  considerable  inroads  upon  the 
numbers  of  these  poor  people  during  the  last  winter. 


12 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


chimney,  if  even  that.  The  sun  that  rose  on  a  village  sets  on  a  desert ;  the  police 
return  to  their  barracks,  and  the  people  are  nowhere  to  be  found,  or  are  vainly 
•watching  from  some  friendly  covert  for  the  chance  of  crouching  once  more  under 
their  ruined  homes. 

"  What  to  the  Irish  heart  is  more  painful  than  even  the  large  amount  and  stern 
method  of  the  destruction,  is  that  the  authors  this  time  are  Saxon  strangers.  It  is  a 
■wealthy  London  company  that  is  invading  the  quiet  retreats  of  Connemara,  and 
.robbing  a  primitive  peasantry  of  its  last  hold  on  the  earth.  The  Law  Life  Assurance 
Company  having  advanced,  we  believe,  £240,000  on  the  Martin  estates,  has  now 
become  the  purchaser  under  the  Encumbered  Estates  Acts,  and  is  adopting  these 
summary  but  usual  measures  to  secure  the  forfeited  pledge.  That  gentlemen,  many 
of  whom  have  never  set  foot  in  Ireland,  and  who  are  wealthy  enough  to  lend  a 
quarter  of  a  million  of  money,  should  exact  the  last  penny  from  a  wretched  peasantry 
who  had  no  hand  or  voice  in  the  transaction  which  gave  them  new  masters,  seems 
utterly  intolerable  to  the  native  Irish  reason." 

We  have  said,  that  to  the  separation  of  the  consumer  from  the  producer 
produced  by  the  adoption  of  British  free  trade,  having  for  its  object  the 
establishment  of  a  monopoly  of  the  machinery  of  manufacture  for  the  world, 
are  due  the  exhaustion  of  Ireland,  the  ruin  of  its  landholders,  the  starvation 
of  its  people,  and  the  degradation  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  of  the  country 
which  has  furnished  to  the  continent  its  best  soldiers,  and  to  the  empire  not 
only  its  most  industrious  and  intelligent  labourers,  but  also  its  Burke,  its 
Grattan,  its  Sheridan,  and  its  Wellington ;  and  in  this  view  we  are  fully 
borne  out  by  Mr.  Thomas  Francis  Meagher,  a  few  extracts  from  whose 
speeches  on  various  occasions  will  now  be  given.  In  a  speech  delivered  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Irish  Confederation,  on  April  7, 1847,  he  used  these  impressive 
words  : 

"  Tell  me,  has  England  not  eaten  enough  of  your  food,  and  has  she  not  broken 
down  enough  of  your  manufactories,  and  has  she  not  buried  enough  of  your  people  ? 
Recount  for  a  moment  a  few  of  your  losses.  The  cotton  manufacture  of  Dublin, 
which  employed  14,000  operatives,  has  been  destroyed;  the  3400  silk-looms  of  the 
Liberty  have  been  destroyed ;  the  stuff  and  serge  manufacture,  which  employed 
1491  operatives,  have  been  destroyed ;  the  calico-looms  of  Balbriggan  have  been 
destroyed ;  the  flannel  manufacture  of  Rathdrum  has  been  destroyed ;  the  blanket 
manufacture  of  Kilkenny  has  been  destroyed ;  the  camlet  trade  of  Baudon,  which 
produced  £100,000  a  year,  has  been  destroyed  ;  the  worsted  and  stuff  manufactures 
of  Waterford  have  been  destroyed  ;  the  rateen  and  frieze  manufactures  of  Carrick- 
on-Suir  have  been  destroyed.  One  business  alone  sui-vives  !  One  business  alone 
thrives  and  flourishes,  and  dreads  no  bankruptcy  !  That  fortunate  business — which 
the  Union  Act  has  not  struck  down,  but  which  the  Union  Act  has  stood  by — which 
the  absentee  drain  has  not  slackened,  but  has  stimulated — which  the  drainage  acts 
and  navigation  laws  of  the  Imperial  Senate  have  not  deadened  but  invigorated — 
that  favoured,  and  privileged,  and  patronized  business  is  the  Irish  coffin-maker's." 

Such  is  everywhere  the  result  of  the  British  colonial  system,  which 
England  denominates  free  trade.  The  population  of  her  West  India  islands 
is  not  now  more  than  one-half  of  the  number  of  Africans  that  have  been  im- 
ported into  them.  In  India,  in  the  twenty  years  from  1818  to  1838,  there 
were  no  less  than  nine  years  of  famine.  That  of  1837-8  was  terrific,  yet 
the  unfortunate  people  were  surrounded  by  millions  upon  millions  of  acres 
of  the  richest  lands  in  the  world,  which  they  could  not  cultivate  for  want  of 
machinery,  although  the  raw  materials  of  that  machinery  abounded.  Whole 
families  of  respectability  poisoned  themselves,  rather  than  beg  a  little  rice 
for  their  support.  The  rivers  were  choked  with  dead  bodies  in  the  provinces 
in  which  this  abundance  of  waste  land  existed  ]  and  the  air  putrefied  with 
the  stench  of  dead  and  dying  men,  women,  and  children;  while  jackals  and 
vultures  were  seen  preying  on  the  still  animated  bodies  of  our  fellow-creatures. 

The  policy  of  England  in  India  has  been  the  same  that  has  been  pursued 


Ireland's  miseries:  their  cause. 


13 


in  Ireland.  The  whole  produce  of  the  land  not  required  for  the  consumption 
of  the  agriculturalists  themselves,  has  had  to  go  to  distant  markets;  the  con- 
sequence of  which  has  been  exhaustion  of  the  land  wherever  cultivated,  and 
an  inability  to  obtain  the  machinery  by  aid  of  which  to  bring  the  richer  soils 
into  cultivation.  "  Hitherto/'  says  a  recent  English  traveller,  speaking  of 
the  country  on  the  Nerbudda — 

"  Little  beyond  the  rude  produce  of  the  soil  has  been  able  to  find  its  way  into  , 
distant  markets,  from  tlie  valley  of  the  Nerbudda  ;  yet  this  valley  abounds  in  iron 
mines  ;  and  its  soil,  where  unexhausfed  by  cropping,  is  of  the  richest  quality.  It  is  not 
then  too  much  to  hope  that  in  time  the  iron  of  the  mines  will  be  worked  into  ma- 
chinery for  manufactures  ;  and  that  multitudes,  aided  by  this  machinery,  and  sub- 
sisted on  the  rude  agricultural  produce  which  now  flows  out,  will  invest  their  labour 
in  manufactured  commodities  adapted  to  foreign  markets,  and  better  able,  from 
their  superior  value,  compared  with  their  bulk,  to  pay  the  cost  of  transport  by  land. 
Then,  and  not  till  then,  can  we  expect  to  see  these  territories  pay  a  considerable  net 
surplus  revenue  to  government,  and  abound  in  a  middle  class  of  merchants,  manu- 
facturers, and  agricultural  capitalists." — Col.  Sleeman's  Rambles  in  India. 

This  is  certainly  a  pleasant  anticipation,  but  the  policy  of  Great  Britain 
looks  to  compelling  the  whole  people  of  the  world  to  become  agriculturists, 
that  she  may  be  cheaply  supplied  with  the  raw  products  of  the  earth,  while 
they  exhaust  the  land,  as  has  been  done  in  every  country  of  the  world  with 
which  she  has  had  what  she  calls  free  trade,  and  which  we  regard  as  mono- 
poly of  the  most  oppressive  kind. 

Again,  in  a  speech  at  Belfast,  on  November  15,  1847,  Mr. -  Meagher  said : 

"How  do  you  explain  this  fact,  that  previous  to  the  enactment  of  the  Union,  in 
thousands  of  factories  now  closed  up,  there  were  so  many  evidences  of  an  industrious 
disposition?  I  cannot  run  through  them  all,  but  take  one  or  two.  Dublin,  with 
its  ninety-one  master-manufacturers  in  the  woollen  trade,  employing  4938  hands  ; 
Cork,  with  its  forty-one  employers  in  the  same  trade,  giving  employment  to  2500 
hands  ;  Bandon,  your  old  southern  ally,  with  its  camlet  trade,  producing  upward 
of  £100,000  a  year  ;  were  these  no  proofs  of  an  active  spirit,  seeking  in  tlie  rugged 
paths  of  labour  for  that  gold  out  of  which  a  nation  weaves  its  purple  robe,  and 
moulds  its  sceptre  ?  I  cite  these  towns  :  I  could  cite  a  hundred  other  towns — 
Limerick,  Roscrea,  Carrick-on-Suir,  Kilkenny — I  cite  them  against  the  Union.' 

In  the  same  speech,  in  recounting  the  wrongs  Ireland  had  endured  at  the 
hands  of  the  British  Government,  he  said  : 

"  Thus  it  is  that  the  grant  in  aid  of  your  linen  manufacture  has  been  withdrawn ; 
thus  it  is  that  the  grant  in  aid  of  the  deep  sea  fisheries  has  been  withdrawn  ;  thus 
it  is  that  the  i^fotective  duties  have  been  repealed,  in  spite  of  the  remonstrance  of  the 
principal  manufacturers  of  Ireland." 

And  on  the  same  occasion  at  Belfast,  Mr.  Meagher  quoted  the  following 
facts  from  a  previous  writer,  in  illustration  of  his  own  views  in  reference  to 
the  eflfect  which  free  trade  with  England  had  exercised  upon  the  condition 
of  his  native  country  : 

"  The  exports  and  imports,  as  far  as  they  are  a  test  of  decay  of  profitable  occupa- 
tion— so  far  as  the  exports  and  imports  are  supplied  from  the  parliamentary  returns 
— exhibit  extraordinax-y  evidence  of  the  condition  of  the  labouring  classes.  The 
importation  of  flax-seed  (an  evidence  of  the  extent  of  a  most  important  source  of 
employment)  was— in  1790,  339,745  barrels;  1800,  327,721  barrels;  1836,  469,458 
barrels.  The  importation  of  silk,  raw  and  thrown,  was — in  1790,  92,091  lbs.  ;  1800, 
79,060  lbs.;  1830,  3190  lbs.  Of  unwrought  iron— in  1790,  2271  tons;  in  1800, 
10,241  tons;  in  1830,  871  tons.  Formerly  we  spun  all  our  own  woollen  and  worsted 
yarn.  We  imported  in  1790,  only  2294  lbs. ;  in  1800,  1880  lbs. ;  in  1826,  662,750 
lbs. — an  enormous  increase.  There  were,  I  understand,  upwards  of  thirty  persons 
engaged  in  the  woollen  trade  in  Dublin,  who  have  become  bankrupts  since  1821. 


14 


Ireland's  miseries:  their  cause. 


There  has  been  doubtless  an  increase  in  the  exports  of  cottons.  The  exports  were — 
in  1800,  9147  yards;  1826,  7,793,873.  The  exports  of  cotton  from  Great  Britain 
•were. ..in  1829,  402,517,196  yards,  value  £12,516,247,  which  will  give  the  value  of 
our  cotton  exports  at  something  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  million — poor  substitute  for 
our  linens,  which  the  province  of  Ulster  alone  exceeded  in  value  two  millions  two 
hundred  thousand  pounds.  In  fact,  every  other  return  affords  unequivocal  proof 
that  the  main  sources  of  occupation  are  decisively  cut  off  from  the  main  body  of  the 
population  of  this  country.  The  export  of  live  cattle  and  of  corn  has  greatly  in- 
creased ;  but  these  are  raw  material.  There  is  little  more  labour  in  the  production 
of  an  ox  than  the  occupation  of  him  who  herds  and  houses  him ;  his  value  is  the 
rent  of  the  land,  the  price  of  the  grass  that  feeds  him  ;  while  an  equal  value  of  cotton, 
or  liuen,  or  pottery,  will  require  for  its  production  the  labour  of  many  people  for 
money.  Thus  the  exports  of  the  country  now  are  somewhat  under  the  value  of  the 
exports  thirty  years  since,  but  they  employ  nothing  like  the  number  of  the  people 
for  their  production;  employment  is  immensely  reduced — population  increased 
three-eighths.  Thus,  in  this  transition  from  the  state  of  a  manufacturing  population  to 
an  agricultural^  a  mass  of  misery,  poverty,  and  discontent  is  created." 

Such  are  the  circumstances  that  have  led  to  the  ruin  and  depopulation  of 
Ireland.  England  desired  to  convert  Ireland,  as  she  now  desires  to  convert 
this  country,  from  a  manufacturing  to  an  exclusively  agricultural  population. 
She  desired,  as  far  as  possible,  to  keep  the  loom  and  the  spade  at  a  distance 
fi-om  the  plough  and  the  harrow,  and  the  result  has  been  there,  as  it  must 
be  here,  a  mass  of  poverty,  misery,  and  discontent.''  For  all  this,  how- 
ever, the  Times  finds  consolation  in  the  fact  that — 

"  When  the  Celt  has  crossed  the  Atlantic,  he  begins  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  to  con- ' 
su77ie  the  manufactures  of  this  country,  and  indirectly  to  contribute  to  its  customs.  We 
may  possiblj^  live  to  see  the  day  when  the  chief  product  of  Ireland  will  be  cattle,  and 
English  and  Scotch  the  majority  of  her  population.  The  nine  or  ten  millions  of 
Irish,  who  by  that  time  will  have  settled  in  the  United  States,  cannot  be  less  friendly 
to  England,  and  will  certainly  be  much  better  customers  to  her  than  they  now  are" 

Extraordinary  as  is  this  fact,  it  is  nevertheless  true.  From  the  moment 
the  Irishman  crosses  the  Atlantic,  he  commences  his  contribution  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  system  by  which  Ireland  has  been  ruined.  From  that 
moment  he  begins  to  lend  his  aid  to  the  system  which  looks  to  the  substitu- 
tion of  cattle  for  the  late  occupant  of  the  land — the  Celt,  so  long  a  hewer 
of  wood  and  drawer  of  water"  for  the  Saxon.  From  the  moment  an  Irish- 
man lands  in  this  country,  he  is  found  lending  his  aid  to  the  election  of  law- 
makers, who  profess  the  same  principles  of  legislation  as  those  which  have 
brought  misery  upon  his  native  land,  and  driven  himself  from  the  hearth- 
stone of  his  fathers.  The  free-traders  of  England  determined  that  Ireland 
should  raise  potatoes  for  its  people,  and  beef  and  grain  to  be  carried  across 
the  channel  and  eaten  in  Britain — that  Irishmen  should  be  strictly  confined 
to  agricultural  production,  and  buy  all  their  manufactures  at  the  workshops 
of  England.  Our  free-traders  seek  to  enforce  the  same  policy  upon  us,  and 
Irishmen  who  have  fled  to  avoid  the  consequences  of  being  thus  tributary  to 
England,  aid  by  their  votes  in  again  reducing  themselves  to  the  same  sub- 
jection. The  free-traders  of  England  have  been  for  half  a  century  doing  all 
in  their  power  to  reduce  the  wages  of  labour  to  the  lowest  point,  to  the  end 
that  they  might  manufacture  for  the  whole  world,  and  undersell  all  mankind 
in  their  various  domestic  markets.  The  free-traders  of  the  United  States 
insist  that  we  should  oppose  no  resistance  to  the  monopoly  of  Britain,  and 
they  expect  Irishmen  to  help  them  by  their  votes.  The  advocates  of  the 
union  of  the  loom  and  the  anvil  with  the  plough  and  the  harrow,  on  the 
contrary,  look  upon  high  wages  to  labour  as  the  sure  basis  of  national 
prosperity.    They  know  that  the  Irishman  who  works  for  18  cents  a  day  in 


Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 


15 


his  own  country,  makes  no  profit  for  his  employer,  no  savings  for  himself. 
The  same  Irishman,  when  he  goes  into  the  harvest  fields  of  England,  earns 
perhaps  37 ^  cents  a  day.  His  employer  derives  a  profit  from  his  labour, 
and  he  is  enabled  to  save  enough,  with  the  aid  of  the  friends  who  have  pre- 
ceded him  to  America,  to  make  up  a  little  kit  and  emigrate  to  our  shores. 
Here  he  obtains  from  75  to  100  cents  a  day,  and  soon  accumulates  a  little 
capital,  which  enables  him  to  employ  his  countrymen  as  they  arrive,  while 
those  who  pay  him  these  wages  make  profits  from  his  labour  twice  as  great 
as  those  who  paid  him  but  half  as  much  in  England  ;  and  in  a  still  higher 
proportion  to  those  who  paid  him  but  one-fourth  as  much  in  Ireland. 

The  personal  observation  of  every  emigrant  verifies  these  facts.  They 
cannot  help  seeing  that  the  road  to  equalization  and  Democracy  is  through 
the  Whig  policy  of  elevating  the  reward  of  domestic  labour ;  and  yet  the 
party  which  believes  in  low  wages,  and  in  buying  from  England  because  her 
people  are  forced  to  work  at  low  wages — which  thus  does  all  in  its  power  to 
keep  down  wages  here  and  there — expects  to  get  Irish  votes  in  the  perverted 
name  of  Democracy ;  and  therefore,  unhappily,  it  has  been  proved  among 
ourselves,  that  the  most  efficient  supporters  of  the  British  system  have  been 
found  among  those  whom  that  system  has  deprived  of  the  power  of  support- 
ing themselves,  their  parents,  their  wives  and  their  children,  at  home. 

Such  being  the  case,  we  need  not  wonder  when  we  find  the  Times  rejoicing 
at  the  gradual  disappearance  of  the  native  population,  nor  that  it  should 
find  in 

The  abstraction  of  the  Celtic  race  at  the  rate  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  a  year, 
a  surer  remedy  for  the  inveterate  Irish  disease,  than  any  human  wit  could  have  ima- 
gined." 

The  "  inveterate  Irish  disease"  here  spoken  of  is  a  total  absence  of  demand 
for  labour,  resulting  from  the  determination  of  Manchester  and  Birmingham 
to  maintain  the  monopoly  of  the  power  to  manufacture  for  the  world.  The 
sure  remedy  for  this  is  found  in  famines,  pestilences,  and  expatriation,  the 
necessary  results  of  British  free  trade. 

In  a  recent  and  eloquent  speech  from  Mr.  Meagher,  that  gentleman  spoke 
of  his  country  as  one 

"Whose  name  sounded  like  a  funeral-hymn.  It  told  of  a  land,  the  joy  of  whose  heart 
had  ceased — whose  inheritance  was  turned  to  strangers,  and  whose  house  to  aliens — 
whose  3'oung  men  were  gone  into  captivity — whose  cities  were  solitary  that  were 
full  of  people,  and  whose  gates  were  desolate.  Of  that  laud  the}''  had  heard  him 
speak  when  the  light  of  a  new  destiny — beautiful  as  the  light  -which  shone  over  the 
face  of  the  prophet — revealed  her  in  a  defiant  attitude  to  the  world.  He  did  not 
then  pause  for  words.  He  should  not  pause  now,  were  he  to  behold  the  same  trans- 
figuration. It  was  painful  for  them  to  be  there,  and  have  to  own  that  they  belonged 
to  a  country  which,  along  the  great  highway  of  nations,  moved  on  unchartered  and 
unrecognised.  It  was  a  galling  thought.  It  flooded  the  heart  with  bitterness,  and 
flushed  the  honest  cheek  with  shame.  The  glory  of  a  free  country  descended  upon 
^ach  one  of  her  children — the  poorest  even — and  they  walked  the  world  respected. 
/  'They  bore  credentials  which  entitled  them  to  the  hospitality,  and  it  might  be,  to  the 
homage  of  the  stranger.  It  was  painful  for  them,  as  he  said,  to  be  there,  and  feel 
they  had  no  such  country." 

He  regarded  her  as  one  whose  present  condition  afforded  little  reason  for  hope. 
Nevertheless  "he  would  keep  alive  the  feelings,  keep  alive  the  hopes  which, 
down  even  to  our  own  day,  have  borne  her  with  unconquered  endurance 
through  the  agony  of  ages.^^  Hope  in  the  future  emancipation  of  his  coun- 
try had  alone,  as^he  told  his  hearers,  console^  him  in  all  his  vicissitudes  of 

\\  .fortune,  audJie  concluded  with  the  fevvent  M-a\'er —  ^  s  '  J\V 

.V     ■',  »  .V  ^'t  i>      '       .  '  %  V     -  .  V5 


16  Ireland's  miseries  :  their  cause. 

"  That  it  might  be  vouchsafed  to  them  to  see  that  hope  fulfilled!  That  it  might 
be  Youchsafed  to  them  to  dwell  upon  the  earth  until  the  promised  day  had  dawned 
upon  the  land  of  their  fathers,  and  their  eyes  had  beheld  her  salvation !  That  it 
might  be  vouchsafed  to  them  to  return  to  that  land — to  behold  her  in  her  gladness 
and  her  glory,  as  they  had  looked  upon  her  in  her  sorrow  and  captivity — to  lead  their 
children  to  her  altar,  and  dedicate  them  to  her  service — for  their  old  age  to  claim  an 
honourable  seat  within  her  gates,  as  they  had  been  faithful  to  her  youth — and  in  her 
holy  soil,  a  resting  place  forever." 

To  this  we  cry,  Amen  !  We  desire  to  see  Ireland  restored,  and  made  a 
place  fitting  for  the  residence  of  its  sons.  ^Ye  desire  to  see  Irishmen  occupy- 
that  high  place  in  the  estimation  of  the  world  to  which  they  have,  on  so 
many  occasions,  proved  themselves  so  well  entitled.  "VVe  desire  to  see  the 
day  when  it  shall  no  longer  be  needed  that  the  daughters  of  Ireland  should 
be  compelled  to  separate  themselves  from  parents,  and  brothers,  and  sisters, 
to  seek  service  in  foreign  lands,  and  therefore  do  we  desire  to  see  Irishmen 
aiding,  not  in  the  maintenance  of  the  British  monopoly,  but  in  resistance  to 
that  monopoly,  by  recognising  the  existence  of  the  fact,  that  in  protecting 
the  farmers  and  planters  of  this  country  in  their  efforts  to  bring  the  spindle 
and  the  loom  to  the  side  of  the  plough  and  the  harrow,  they  are  protecting 
themselves.  It  is  time  they  should  see,^'  says  one  of  our  contemporaries, 
"  that  so  long  as  they  '  contribute  to  the  customs'  of  England,  as  the  Times 
very  truly  says  they  do — so  long  as  by  buying  English  manufactures,  they 
pay  English  wages,  and  in  paying  English  wages,  pay  the  taxes  that  are 
extracted  by  the  government  from  those  wages — it  is  thei/  who  pay  the  po- 
lice— there  are  twelve  thousand  of  them  in  Ireland,  kept  up  at  a  cost  of  two 
and  a  half  millions  a  year — and  the  soldiery  and  the  crow-bar  brigade  to 
pull  down  the  roof-trees  of  their  brethren  !  Can  they  not  see  that  when  the 
Irishmen  in  America  refuse  to  be  customers  to  England,  the  temptation  for 
driving  them  from  their  native  soil  will  be  greatly  diminished,  and  that  if 
England  is  forced  to  raise  breadstuffs  at  home,  or  in  Ireland,  her  fields  will 
not  be  depopulated  to  make  cattle  pastures  and  sheep  walks  ? 

"  Tho  Irish  voters  can  control  the  election  of  more  than  enough  members 
of  Congress,  in  the  Middle  and  Western  States,  to  establish  the  protective 
policy  permanently  in  this  country,  and  thereby  to  build  up  American  manu- 
factures, so  that  all  the  raw  materials  which  our  own  soil  and  mines  supply, 
shall  be  wrought  up  at  home  by  the  labour  of  our  citizens,  native  and 
adopted — to  secure  an  ample  domestic  market  among  those  labourers  for  all 
their  agricultural  products,  instead  of  being  forced  to  send  them  abroad  for  a 
market,  while  swelling  the  number  of  producers ;  because  every  new  citizen 
who  is  deprived  of  mechanical  employment  is  compelled  to  become  a  farmer — 
to  dry  up  the  greatest  tributary  to  the  commerce  and  power  of  England,  by 
depriving  her  of  what  are  now  her  largest  markets  and  her  most  profitable 
customers  in  the  United  States.  To  do  this  would  be  to  secure  Ireland  for 
the  future  and  avenge  her  for  the  past,  as  far  as  can  be,  until  Ireland  shall 
again  have  a  Parliament,  when  she  would  re-establish  an  Irish  protective 
tariff  at  the  first  session.'' 

The  Irishmen  of  Albany  saw  the  evil  and  the  remedy,  when,  at  their  last 
St.  Patrick's  festival,  they  received  with  rapturous  applause  the  following 
toast  offered  by  Mr.  J ohn  Costigan,  of  that  city : 

"'Protection  to  American  Industry — The  most  legitimate  and  effectual  punish- 
ment we  can  inflict  on  John  Bull  for  his  tyranny  and  oppression  to  Ireland.  Let  us 
have  a  tariff  high  enough  to  exclude  the  importation  of  all  British  manufactures.'" 


